Ahmadinejad arrives in Caracas

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and was welcomed by Venezuelan Vice-President Elias Jaua at the airport on Monday morning. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other senior Venezuelan officials. He will also sign several contracts and inaugurate a number of projects. Ahmadinejad left Tehran for Caracas on a tour of four Latin American states on Sunday morning. Iran has been seeking to boost its ties with Latin American countries in recent years to the concern of the United States. Since taking office in 2005, President Ahmadinejad has expanded Iran's cooperation with many Latin American states, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Brazil. But, Iran has grown specially expansive ties with Venezuela, and now the two countries are considered allies in many fields and in all international bodies, specially within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) which controls the world's oil lifeline. The strong and rapidly growing ties between Iran and Latin America have raised eyebrows in the US and its western allies since Tehran and Latin nations have forged an alliance against the imperialist and colonialist powers and are striving hard to reinvigorate their relations with the other independent countries which pursue a line of policy independent from the US.